Another Wacky Dating Show-Love in the jungle.
The
new dating show is wild, and I didn’t mean figuratively I mean literally.
“Love
in the Jungle” premiered on Sunday, May 8 at Discovery+ and the show has 14
singles who want to find their inner sexy beasts. The show’s concept goes like
this---these 14 people are placed in a private eco-reserve in Colombia where
they flirt and take part in mating rituals which are lifted from the animal
kingdom — and they have to do it without being able to verbally communicate.
Stephan
Davis who is 31, and a participant on the show, told The Post. “It was very tough
not talking to one another, but you can touch them on the shoulder to show your
interest. It practically is being playful, so it was cool,”
He
added “For me, it was undeniably in the eye contact. Funnily enough, you get a
little bit used to it and start connecting with people you have never even said
a word to. It was the weirdest experience. The hugging and the kissing were
intensified, for showing affection when we couldn’t talk.”
On
the show, each single represents a different animal and wears a symbol around
their neck deemed as a “token,” like a koala or a tiger.
Davis,
who’s from Long Island and is a model and behaviour specialist working with the
mentally disabled, was given a token of a bee.
“We
assessed different personalities of different animals,” he told The Post. “Bees
communicate through dancing, seemingly. They do it for a number of reasons,
like finding the best flower or signalling their desire to mate.”
Buzzing
around other single people wasn’t a big deal for me, he said. “I was like ‘Wow,
I dance around and I’m like that person when I am around people, anyways.’ So,
I guess it connects.”
Paige
Dacanay who is 26, another participant on the show from Los Angeles and with a
career in software sales, was asked to find her “inner starfish.”
“Starfish
have many nerve endings. So, that means to try and tap into my emotional side
without any bar,” she told The Post.
She
said she chose eye contact to communicate if she was interested in someone and
imitating the qualities of starfish lead her to do a lot of soul-searching.
“For me, my interest was based on physicality. I realized, ‘I might be
physically attracted to this person, but without any conversation, I don’t know
anything about them. I could be attracted to another person’s mind.’
Was
it awkward? “When it started, it was really awkward and uncomfortable,” Dacanay
said. “But when we started enjoying the experience we thought, ‘Let’s just find
and accept our inner animals and get wild together in the show.’
Jennifer
Verdolin an animal behaviour expert, was a consultant on the show and authored
the book “Wild Connection: What Animal Courtship and Mating Tell Us About
Human Relationships?” She told The Post that she was thrilled how the show would
do as she believes animal behaviour translates when it comes to human dating.
“There
are a lot of imperative things to look for. I think one really important one is
to be choosy,” she said. “Often we’re told, ‘to not be too demanding.’ When in
reality we are supposed to be choosy, and this is the case with every animal
because choosing your partner is important.”
She
observed how when participants tried to lock down potential partners quite fast
it didn’t work out for some singles on “Love in the Jungle.”
“This
method does not work well as it does not reflect other animals’ actions.
There’s a lot of selection that goes on in other species. And so, those who
tried to secure and control a potential mate, and to keep them away from others
wasn’t going to work out well, in my opinion.”
For
the audiences at home, the singles would sometimes talk directly to the camera
in a section called confessionals, and if they win a certain challenge, they
can go on a private date where they can talk to each other. The “challenges”
are based on mating rituals taken from real practices in nature. For instance,
to imitate the behaviour of male frogs, the men had to push each other off a
small rock in the water while the women looked on.
“The men would perform many challenges to attract the attention of females, and we were doing different things such as dancing,” said Dacanay. “It’s wonderful and sexy and unlike any other thing. It brings out different sides of them, and you’d be left thinking, ‘Was that cute, I think I quite liked that.’ So, it would make you look at the guys with a different perspective.”